Big 2.5 Owned Beers

Over on the Beer Wars blog, there’s a compiled list of what brands Anheuser-Busch Inbev and MillerCoors own. It’s a huge list and there are a lot of surprises on it. Some of the biggest surprises for me…

As I’ve said before, supporting independent breweries is important. Sadly, the acquisitions by the Big 2.5 have brought formerly independent brands and famous old imports together. Leinenkugel is one of the few union-made beers, a standout from an age before the Big Three started busting their workers’ rights to organize.

More to the point, when thinking about how money I spend goes to support big brewing companies and what they do with it — ie crush independent breweries — the logic needs to extend to their other brands that people might not associate with Bud Light, Miller Lite or Coors Light. Maybe looking at this list is depressing because so many interesting and popular beers have been acquired by the Big 2.5. But the good news is that there are tons of other great beers to drink out there and our horizons can only be expanded.